Lumaa 151 - Back to the Basics

Hi there.

Today was the first day of Lumaa 2017. It's the 2^nd Lucerne Master Academy of Animation (www.lumaa.ch) and I'm lucky to be part of it.

It's about 28 degrees. We are boiling in the classroom.

We are 18 People and 2 Teachers. In the first week we learn from KC Royer and Simon Christen from Pixar.

The first day was about repeating the Principles (Solid drawing in 3D Animation = Being on Model. Don't pose or animate the character in a way that's not alike it.)

But what's the most important one of the principles? It's of course....

Timing.

Our first animation task: The bouncing pill. Right. PILL. Not ball. Mwhaha :D

They gave us about 1.5-2h to get our playblasts out. So don't expect something very special.

And we had lunch break in the middle.

Then we watched Footage of an Elephant walking and a Hamster and guessed how many frames it would take us to animate one step of them. (Elephant 3 Seconds/ 72f, Hamster 2-5frames per Step). Monster-Hamster-Cubacapras of course take as long as Elephants.

 

So it's important to look at reference first, to know how much time you will need to block the shot.

Then theory about walking: Human steps are nothing more than controlled falls. We use the least effort possible to get from A to B.

Our second animation task: Walking hips. Vanilla. We took Norman, hid everything that's above the hip and started animating. Yes and there I am now. Still not happy with my result:

Norman Rig

The front view feels okay to me but the sideview... arrrgh.. I have to polish it a bit before I can show this tomorrow.

The best Playblast I had today was when I tried to enable Onion Skinning on Normans Hips:

Hahah :D